1813-55, Danish philosopher and religious thinker.Kierkegaard’s outwardly uneventful life in
Copenhagen contrasted with his intensive inner examination of self and society,
which resulted in many diversified and profound writings; their dominant theme
is that “truth is subjectivity.” Kierkegaard argued that in religion the
important thing is not truth as objective fact but rather the individual’s
relationship to it.Thus it is not
enough to believe the Christian doctrine; one must also live it.

It is not the duty of the human understanding to understand
that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things
are.Human understanding has vulgarly
occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if would only take the
trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simple have to posit the
paradox.

In order to swim one takes off all one’s clothes- in order
to aspire to the truth one must undress in a far more inward sense, divest
oneself of all one’s inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions, selfishness etc.
before one is sufficiently naked.

Because of its tremendous solemnity death is the light in
which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent, no longer limited
by outward appearances.

Father in Heaven! When the thought of thee wakes in our
hearts let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but
like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and
just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is the great thinker who is
exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose
thoughts in embryo.

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his
own.

Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony
in life’s relationships, just as the cold winter produces ice-flowers on the
windowpanes, which vanish with the warmth.

The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being
caught.You cannot have the truth in
such a way that you can catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is
always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by
those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory,
formed by the gangs who have no opinion- and who, therefore, in the next
instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its
opinion… while Truth again revert to a new minority.

Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving
birth- look at the dying man’s struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me
whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.

Soren Kierkegaard

In
addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate
confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known—no
wonder, then, I return the love.

Doubt
is thought’s despair; despair is personality’s doubt…Doubt and
despair…belong to completely different spheres; different sides of the
soul are set in motion… Despair is an expression of the total personality,
doubt only of thought.

Faith
is the highest passion in a human being.Many in every generation may not come that far, but none comes
further.

This
is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out
their lives in quiet lostness… they live, as it were, away from themselves
and vanish like shadows.Their
immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question
of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they
die.

Just
as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to
breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a
soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when prayer he can, as it
were, creep into God.

Most
men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

What
is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart
but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they
sound like beautiful music.

If I
were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for
the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and
ardent, sees the possible.Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so
intoxicating, as possibility!

Since
my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart.As long as it stays I am ironic—if it
is pulled out I shall die.

People
commonly travel the world over to se rivers and mountains, new stars,
garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an
animal stupor that gapes at existence and they have seen something.

The
tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.